1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to computer networks in general, and in particular, to computer networks having a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to an apparatus for enabling multi-tuple TCP sockets within a computer network
2. Description of the Related Art
Any delivery of data between two computer systems has to meet the rules of the five-layer Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. Layer 5 (the topmost layer) is the Application layer that represents such protocols as File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Telnet, etc. Layers 4 and 3 are the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) layer and the Internet Protocol (IP) layer, respectively, which are used by computer systems attached to the Internet and other private networks. Layer 2 is the Data Link Protocol layer, which includes Ethernet, Fiber Distributed Data Network (FDDI), Frame Relay (FR), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), etc. Some of the layer 2 protocols transgress into other protocol layers, above and below, as dictated by the nature of transmission rules of the protocol. Layer 1 is the Physical layer that is represented by the physical medium of transmission such as the single-mode or multi-mode fibers used for ATM, twisted copper pairs used in local-area networks (LANs), radio channels for wide-area networks (WANs), and related hardware.
In general, where LAN-to-LAN communications are carried out by using TCP via a WAN, a mutual connection system commonly known as a router, which can handle the processes up to the network layer, is employed to connect a LAN to the WAN. In the mutual connection system, the protocol processes in the physical layer to the network layer in the OSI reference model have been accomplished, and flow control and error control are carried out between the terminals by using TCP on an end-to-end basis.
Currently, when a TCP connection is initiated between two computer systems within a computer network, a path selected to the destination is usually cached in a socket. Also, a 4-tuple, which includes a source IP address, a destination IP address, a source port, and a destination port, is constructed and stored in the socket. In the above-mentioned scenario, the TCP connection will fail if any router along the selected path goes down. In addition, the TCP connection may suffer from poor performance if any router along the selected path is congested with too much network traffic. As a result, those routers may drop IP packets, which causes the TCP connection to retransmit packets such that performance is diminished.
Consequently, it would be desirable to furnish an improved method and apparatus for providing a TCP connection within a computer network.